Brioude, the ancient Brinas, was formerly a place of considerable importance. It was in turn besieged and captured by the Goths (532), the Burgundians, the Saracens (732) and the Normans. In 1181 the viscount of Polignac, who had sacked the town two years previously, made public apology in front of the church, and established a body of twenty-five knights to defend the relics of St Julian. For some time after 1361 the town was the headquarters of Bérenger, lord of Castelnau, who was at the head of one of the bands of military adventurers which then devastated France. The knights (or canons, as they afterwards became) of St Julian bore the title of counts of Brioude, and for a long time opposed themselves to the civic liberties of the inhabitants.
BRIQUEMAULT (or Briquemaut), FRANÇOIS DE BEAUVAIS, Seigneur de (c. 1502-1572), leader of the Huguenots during the first religious wars, was the son of Adrien de Briquemault and Alexane de Sainte Ville, and was born about 1502. His first campaign was under the count of Brissac in the Piedmontese wars. On his return to France in 1554 he joined Admiral Coligny. Charged with the defence of Rouen, in 1562, he resigned in favour of Montgomery, to whom the prince of Condé had entrusted the task, and went over to England, where he concluded the treaty of Hampton Court on the 20th of September. He then returned to France, and took Dieppe from the Catholics before the conclusion of peace. If his share in the second religious war was less important, he played a very active part in the third. He fought at Jarnac, Roche-Abeille and Montcontour, assisted in the siege of Poitiers, was nearly captured by the Catholics at Bourg-Dieu, re-victualled Vézelay, and almost surprised Bourges. In 1570, being charged by Coligny to stop the army of the princes in its ascent of the Rhone valley, he crossed Burgundy and effected his junction with the admiral at St. Étienne in May. On the 21st of the following June he assisted in achieving the victory of Arnay-le-Duc, and was then employed to negotiate a marriage between the prince of Navarre and Elizabeth of England. Being in Paris on the night of St Bartholomew he took refuge in the house of the English ambassador, but was arrested there. With his friend Arnaud da Cavagnes he was delivered over to the parlement, and failed in courage when confronted with his judges, seeking to escape death by unworthy means. He was condemned, nevertheless, on the 27th of October 1572, to the last penalty and to the confiscation of his property, and on the 29th of October he and Cavagnes were executed.
See Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises réformées au royaume de France (new edition, 1884), vol. ii.; La France protestante (2nd edition), vol. ii., article "Beauvais."
BRIQUETTE (diminutive of Fr. brique, brick), a form of fuel, known also as "patent fuel," consisting of small coal compressed into solid blocks by the aid of some binding material. For making briquettes the small coal, if previously washed, is dried to reduce the moisture to at most 4%, and if necessary crushed in a disintegrator. It is then incorporated in a pug mill with from 8 to 10% of gas pitch, and softened by heating to between 70° and 90° C. to a plastic mass, which is moulded into blocks and compacted by a pressure of ½ to 2 tons per sq. in. in a machine with a rotating die-plate somewhat like that used in making semi-plastic clay bricks. When cold, the briquettes, which usually weigh from 7 to 20 lb each, although smaller sizes are made for domestic use, become quite hard, and can be handled with less breakage than the original coal. Their principal use is as fuel for marine and locomotive boilers, the evaporative value being about the same as, or somewhat greater than, that of coal. The principal seat of the manufacture in Great Britain is in South Wales, where the dust and smalls resulting from the handling of the best steam coals (which are very brittle) are obtainable in large quantities and find no other use. Some varieties of lignite, when crushed and pressed at a steam heat, soften sufficiently to furnish compact briquettes without requiring any cementing material. Briquettes of this kind are made to a large extent from the tertiary lignites in the vicinity of Cologne; they are used mainly for house fuel on the lower Rhine and in Holland, and occasionally come to London.
BRISBANE, SIR THOMAS MAKDOUGALL (1773-1860), Scottish soldier and astronomer, was born on the 23rd of July 1773 at Brisbane House, near Largs, in Ayrshire. He entered the army in 1789, and served in Flanders, the West Indies and the Peninsula. In 1814 he was sent to North America; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he was recalled, but did not arrive in time to take part in the battle of Waterloo. In 1821 he was appointed governor of New South Wales. During the four years for which he held that office, although he allowed the finances of the colony to get into confusion, he endeavoured to improve its condition by introducing the vine, sugar-cane and tobacco plant, and by encouraging the breeding of horses and the reclamation of land. At his instigation exploring parties were sent out, and one of these discovered the Brisbane river which was named after him. He established an astronomical observatory at Paramatta in 1822, and the Brisbane Catalogue, which was printed in 1835 and contained 7385 stars, was the result of observations made there in 1822-1826. The observatory was discontinued in 1855. After his return to Scotland he resided chiefly at Makerstoun in Roxburghshire, where, as at Brisbane House, he had a large and admirably equipped observatory. Important magnetic observations were begun at Makerstoun in 1841, and the results gained him in 1848 the Keith prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in whose Transactions they were published. In 1836 he was made a baronet, and G.C.B. in 1837; and in 1841 he became general. He was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh after the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1833, and in the following year acted as president of the British Association. He died at Brisbane House on the 27th of January 1860. He founded two gold medals for the encouragement of scientific research, one in the
award of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the other in that of the Scottish Society of Arts.
BRISBANE, the capital of Queensland, Australia. It is situated in Stanley county, on the banks of the river Brisbane, 25 m. from its mouth in Moreton Bay. It is built on a series of hills rising from the river-banks, but some parts of it, such as Woollongabba and South Brisbane, occupy low-lying flats, which have sometimes been the scene of disastrous floods. The main streets and principal buildings of the city are situated on a tongue of land formed by a southward bend of the river. The extremity of the tongue, however, is open. Here, adjoining one another, are the botanical gardens, the grounds surrounding Government House, the official residence of the governor of the colony, and the Houses of Parliament, and Queen's Park, which is used as a recreation ground. From this park Albert Street runs for about three-quarters of a mile through the heart of the city, leading to Albert Park, in which is the observatory. Queen's Street, the main thoroughfare of Brisbane, crosses Albert Street midway between the two parks and leads across the Victoria Bridge to the separate city of South Brisbane on the other side of the river. The Victoria Bridge is a fine steel structure, which replaced the bridge swept away by floods in February 1893. Brisbane has a large number of buildings of architectural merit, though in some cases their effect is marred by the narrowness of the streets in which they stand. Among the most prominent are the Houses of Parliament, the great domed custom-house on the river-bank, the lands office, the general post-office, the town halls of Brisbane and South Brisbane, and the opera house. The Roman Catholic cathedral of St Stephen (Elizabeth Street) is an imposing building, having a detached campanile containing the largest bell in Australia. The foundation-stone of the Anglican cathedral, on an elevated site in Ann Street, was laid by the prince of Wales (as duke of York) in 1901. The city is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and of an Anglican bishop. Many of the commercial and private buildings are also worthy of notice, especially the Queensland National Bank, a classic Italian structure, the massive treasury buildings, one of the largest erections in Australia, the Queensland Club with its wide colonnades in Italian Renaissance style, and the great buildings of the Brisbane Newspaper Company. Brisbane is well provided with parks and open spaces; the Victoria Park and Bowen Park are the largest; the high-lying Mount Coot-tha commands fine views, and there are other parks and numerous recreation grounds in various parts of the city, besides the admirable botanical gardens and the gardens of the Acclimatization Society. Electric tramways and omnibuses serve all parts of the city, and numerous ferries ply across the river. There is railway communication to north, south and west. By careful dredging, the broad river is navigable as far as Brisbane for ocean-going vessels, and the port is the terminal port for the Queensland mail steamers to Europe, and is visited by steamers to China, Japan and America, and for various inter-colonial lines. There is wharf accommodation on both banks of the river, a graving dock which can be used by vessels up to 5000 tons, and two patent slips which can take up ships of 1000 and 400 tons respectively. The exports are chiefly coal, sheep, tallow, wool, frozen meat and hides. The annual value of imports and exports exceeds seven and nine millions sterling respectively. There are boot factories, soap works, breweries, tanneries, tobacco works, &c. The climate is on the whole dry and healthy, but during summer the temperature is high, the mean shade temperature being about 70° F.
Brisbane was founded in 1825 as a penal settlement, taking its name from Sir Thomas Brisbane, then governor of Australia; in 1842 it became a free settlement and in 1859 capital of Queensland, the town up to that time having belonged to New South Wales. It was incorporated in the same year. South Brisbane became a separate city in 1903. The municipal government of the city, and also of South Brisbane, is in the hands of a mayor and ten alderman; the suburbs are controlled by shire councils and divisional boards. The chief suburbs are Kangaroo Point, Fortitude Valley, New Farm, Red Hill, Paddington, Milon, Toowong, Breakfast Creek, Bulimba, Woolongabba, Highgate and Indooroopilly. The population of the metropolitan area in 1901 was 119,907; of the city proper, 28,953; of South Brisbane, 25,481.
BRISEUX, CHARLES ÉTIENNE (c. 1680-1754), French architect. He was especially successful as a designer of internal decorations—mantelpieces, mirrors, doors and overdoors, ceilings, consoles, candelabra, wall panellings and other fittings, chiefly in the Louis Quinze mode. He was also an industrious writer on architectural subjects. His principal works are:—L'Architecture moderne (2 vols., 1728); L'Art de bâtir les maisons de campagne (2 vols., 1743); Traité du beau essentiel dans les arts, appliqué particulièrement à l'architecture (1752); and Traité des proportions harmoniques.
BRISSAC, DUKES OF. The fief of Brissac in Anjou was acquired at the end of the 15th century by a noble French family named Cossé belonging to the same province. René de Cossé married into the Gouffier family, just then very powerful at court, and became premier panelier (chief pantler) to Louis XII. Two of his sons were marshals of France. Brissac was made a countship in 1560 for Charles, the eldest, who was grandmaster of artillery, and governor of Piedmont and of Picardy. The second, Artus, who held the offices of grand panetier of France and superintendent of finance, distinguished himself in the religious wars. Charles II. de Cossé fought for the League, and as governor of Paris opened the gates of that town to Henry IV., who created him marshal of France in 1594. Brissac was raised to a duchy in the peerage of France in 1611. Louis Hercule Timoléon de Cossé, due de Brissac, and commandant of the constitutional guard of Louis XVI., was killed at Versailles on the 9th of September 1792 for his devotion to the king.